Experimental and analytical investigations of a novel energy dissipation device for seismic protection of engineering structures

Abstract In recent years, utilizing energy dissipation devices in building structures has been of great concerns due to the severe earthquake activities around the world. The performance evaluation of friction devices, buckling restrained braces and structural fuses as the recently introduced control systems proved their usability in dealing with different structural systems; however, there has been an increasing interest in decreasing the overall cost of the controlled building structures by developing devices with lower levels of complexity, reusable and easy to be implemented and manufactured after severe vibrations. The main objective of this paper to propose Boxy Bending Damper (BBD) as a novel energy dissipation device with partially lower constructional cost which prepares acceptable levels of stiffness, damping and ductility. This device is constructed by utilizing standard stainless-steel plates and bolts without any welded joints which provides a device with lower constructional complexity and can be considered as an improvement in the passive control devices. The performance of this new device is evaluated through the numerical and experimental analysis in which the optimal geometric configuration of the energy dissipation device is achieved by conducting multiple numerical analysis. The experimental tests have been conducted in order to evaluate the overall feasibility of the device in practice in which a cyclic test is carried out by means of a universal testing machine with maximum displacement of 75 mm. Besides, a parameter identification process is also conducted in order to calculate the required dynamical parameters of the device such as the stiffness, damping and ductility. The overall performance of the device in the experimental and numerical testing processes proved that the proposed device is capable of increasing the energy dissipation levels of structural systems by providing 35% of equivalent viscous damping and ductility ratio of about 33.